[Azerbaijan’s support] is a far cry from the massive firepower and diplomatic cover that Netanyahu wants from Washington. But, by addressing key weaknesses in any Israeli war plan—notably on refueling, reconnaissance and rescuing crews—such an alliance might tilt Israeli thinking on the feasibility of acting without U.S. help.”

“Have you ever wondered how much we as taxpayers actually owe because of commitments politicians have made on our behalf? Turns out, the answer is not as simple as you might think.

The place to start is with a report put out annually by the U.S. Treasury. There I learned that the federal government officially recognizes an outstanding debt of $17.5 trillion. This amount consists of $10.2 trillion in government debt held by the public, plus pension and retirement benefits owed to federal employees.”

Even these numbers are deceptive …

“So let’s see if I’ve got this right. I’ve been paying Social Security taxes for some 45 years or so and the federal government doesn’t officially admit that it owes me a dime. The same is true for 45 years of Medicare taxes. But it does admit that it owes pension benefits and post-retirement medical benefits to federal workers. As a taxpayer, I’m liable for all the promises the government has made to its own employees. But federal workers are not liable (necessarily) for all the promises the government has made to me”

” If today’s seniors get everything that’s been promised to them, they can expect to receive $12.8 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefits beyond the estimated taxes and premiums that will be collected to fund those programs.”

“For all these reasons you can readily see why the liberal narrative that the race is over is aspirational and not factual. Arguing that the “polls are real” or pointing to the
latest gaffe is satisfying for the anxious liberal pundits, I suppose, but neither is an argument to vote for Obama. Neither phenomenon is any guarantee that Obama’s
“lead” is any more lasting than his
”recovery” (which lasted less than the length of an NBA season). “

” The latest durable-goods orders report must have the Obama administration — and the Obama campaign — more worried than they publicly let on. According to the National Journal , the White House will press government contractors to hold off on
issuing layoff notices in October in
anticipation of the sequestration cuts, afraid of the political backlash that will ensue. In fact, the Obama administration is offering to indemnify government contractors for losses and fines for delaying
those notices:

The White House moved to prevent defense and other government contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies would
cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation costs that could follow.

Some defense companies —including Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and EADS North America—have said they expect to send notices to their employees 60 days before sequestration takes effect to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give advance
warning to workers deemed
reasonably likely to lose their jobs.
Companies appeared undeterred by a July 30 guidance from the Labor Department, which said issuing such notices would be inappropriate, due to the possibility that sequestration may
be averted. The Labor Department
also said companies do not have
enough information about how the
cuts might be implemented to
determine which workers or specific programs could be affected should Congress fail to reach a compromise to reduce the deficit, triggering $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, half from defense, half non-defense. For 2013, that would amount to $109 billion in
spending cuts. “

“The excitable lads around the globe torching American embassies with impunity seem to have figured this out, even if the striped-pants crowd at Turtle Bay are too polite to mention it. Obama is not the
president of the Future. He is president right now, and one occasionally wishes the great visionary would take his eye off the
far-distant horizon where educated women and fire-breathing imams frolic and gambol side by side around their Chevy Volts, to
focus on the humdrum present where the rest of us have the misfortune to live.”

“One of the keys to Barack Obama’s victory in Ohio in 2008 was the early voting game. Ohio Democrats tapped into the enthusiasm advantage they had and got their voters to vote early in overwhelming numbers. On election day itself, John McCain actually won. But Obama had such a large lead with votes already banked, that he won Ohio and put the nail in McCain’s coffin.

We have analyzed some polls this year that used ridiculous samples with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by 8 points or more. For example, a recent NBC/WSJ/Marist poll used a Dem +10 sample, and the latest Ohio poll used a preposterous sample with 48% Democrats.“

“Mothers of fallen service members began calling themselves “Gold Star Mothers” during the First World War, but the sorrowful bond they share reaches back to every woman who has lost a son or daughter in uniform since our nation’s revolution. The Army cherishes the mothers of its Soldiers as bedrocks of support and comfort, and honors the mothers of its fallen as resilient legacies of their children’s service. The United States began observing Gold Star Mothers Day on the last Sunday of September in 1936. This year, the Army joins the nation Sept. 30, in recognizing the sacrifice and strength of its Gold Star Mothers.”

“Among other groups of Fast and Furious victim stories Univision says it will tell in the special to air Sunday evening at 7 p.m., is one about how “16 young people attending a party in a residential area of Ciudad Juárez in January of 2010″ were gunned down with weapons the Obama administration gave to drug cartel criminals through Fast and Furious.

“Univision News’ Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different types of crimes throughout Mexico,” the network added. “Furthermore, some of these guns — none of which were reported by congressional investigators — were put in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings ‘the holy grail’ that Congress had been searching for.”

A video preview published on Friday shows a number of the bodies of people killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as well as victims’ family members pleading with outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon for justice.”

“The office of the Director of National Intelligence is both confirming that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was deliberately planned in advance and excusing the White House for getting the story wrong. Officials are trying to determine if a mysterious, little known organization called “Al-Qaeda” had something to do with the attack. This doesn’t seem likely, as Al-Qaeda was reported dead or at least in what former Vice President Cheney would have called its “death throes” in Pakistan last spring, but you never know.”

“Along with John Moses Browning, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Eugene Stoner, Dan Shideler, and Elmer Keith, another man made huge waves in the firearms community with his life’s work. If you are new to the gun world, or if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t bothered to learn read up on some history, let me clue you on whom I’m talking about. Most gun experts recognize Jeff Cooper as the father of the Modern Technique of handgun shooting, and one of the 20th century’s foremost international experts on the use and history of small arms.”

“NASA’s Curiosity, a 2,000-pound super-rover, has found proof that water was on Mars, ranging from ankle to waist deep. This is based on images showing what looks like an ancient gravel stream bed, with Curiosity using one contaminated drill bit.

The evidence of water on Mars is not new evidence, as NASA has found previous signs of water on the Red Planet. NASA’s rover Spirit had discovered sulfate-rich soil beneath the Martian surface, which suggested an earlier presence of liquid water. Also, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbit probed and found water ice in areas that were far away from the Martian polar caps. “

“These are the top 100 conservative websites for 2012 according to Alexa, the web’s number one source for website rankings. This list is based on worldwide rankings, not US rankings. However, it should give you a general idea since almost all of these sites are solely based on conservative American politics. Not much has changed since 2011, just a little reshuffling, with a few omissions and new entries. If you want to know what’s happening with conservative politics in the US, this list should keep you busy for a while.”

“Background: the Spanish-language media organization Univision has apparently been building up quite the head of steam over Operation Fast & Furious, which was an operation where we blithely let guns get handed over to Mexican narco-terrorist gangs with precisely zero oversight, hesitation, or interest in what said gangs would do with said weapons. What they did with them, of course, was to use those guns to murder Mexican nationals. The administration is stonewalling the investigation into all this (particularly the investigation into US Border Agent Brian Terry’s murder, as OF&F guns showed up at the murder scene); and Univision is promising a long, hard look at the ongoing debacle tomorrow.”

1814 – Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw the Europe’s political map after the defeat of Napoléon the previous spring.1827 – The Russian army under Ivan Paskevich storms Yerevan, ending a millennium of Muslim domination in Armenia.11843 – News of the World began publication in London.

1854 – The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Massachusetts, to become the Waltham Watch Company, a pioneer in the American System of Watch Manufacturing.

“Frustrating. Jay-Z likes Barack Obama as the leader of the United States not because of his policies, but because he’s black.”

“The part that is frustrating is that Jay-Z is judging Obama not by the content of his character, but by the color of his skin (heard this before?), because all signs point to a more conservative or libertarian rap mogul and not a guy that a large percentage of the country thinks is about to fall over to the socialist side of the fence.”